Buncombe County – For this week’s history article, we are departing from the state’s historical markers and going to one that was placed in the Pack Square area of downtown Asheville in 2021 by several agencies.
Buncombe Community Remembrance Project, the MLK Association of Asheville, and Buncombe County joined with the Equal Justice Initiative by, placing the “Lynchings In America” marker. The marker is one of several in the county where markers were placed where blacks were known to have been lynched or hung during the years after the Civil War.
“Thousand of Black people were the victims of racial terror lynches in the United States between 1865 and 1950.” begins the plaque. “White community responded with violence and lynched as tools for re-establishing white supremacy. Racial terror lynches emerged as a stunning form of violent resistance to emancipation and equal rights for African Americans, intended to intimidate Black people and maintain white economic, political, and social control.” Three other markers in Buncombe give remembrance to the three documented victims of lynching in the county.
John Humphries
On July 15, 1888, a crowd of 25 to 40 white men lynched John Humphries, a Black teenager. The day before, a white planter’s daughter reported being assaulted in the woods, and race-based suspicion immediately fell upon Black men and boys in the area. Without any evidence linking him to the assault, police arrested John Humphries later that evening.
The officers coerced the teenager into changing into a striped shirt and removing his shoes to match the description of the alleged assailant. They then took him to the planter’s home, where he was falsely identified. John was subsequently jailed. The following morning, a masked mob broke into the jail, and law enforcement unlocked the cell doors, allowing the mob to abduct John. The mob hanged the boy from a tree just a few hundred yards from the jail. White mobs regularly demonstrated a complete disregard for the legal system and the constitutional rights of their Black victims.
Law enforcement routinely failed to protect Black individuals in their custody despite their legal obligation to do so. In this case, officers directly assisted or even participated in the lynching. Although two people, including the sheriff, identified at least one mob member by name, still, no one was held accountable.
Hezekiah Rankin
On September 24, 1891, a mob of at least 20 unmasked white men lynched Hezekiah Rankin, a Black man. Earlier that evening, a white coworker at the Western North Carolina Railroad asked Mr. Rankin to perform duties unrelated to his job. Having been reprimanded previously for performing that same task, Mr. Rankin declined. Insulted by Mr. Rankin’s refusal, the coworker threw lumps of coal at him. Mr. Rankin left but returned later, only to be verbally accosted by the coworker. During the encounter, Mr. Rankin was accused of shooting the man.
A group of at least 25 white railroad employees and local residents seized Mr. Rankin and held him in a nearby roundhouse. Although law enforcement was notified, they did not intervene. That night, the mob hanged Mr. Rankin from a tree along the French Broad River, just south of Smith’s Bridge near the current River Arts District.
Despite eyewitness testimony identifying mob members, a jury concluded that Mr. Rankin was killed “at the hands of parties unknown.” Charges initially brought against four men were dropped, and again no one was held accountable.
Bob Brackett
On August 11, 1897, a Black man, Bob Brackett, was lynched by at least 1,000 white people in Reems Creek. Brackett, a traveling laborer working in the Asheville area was accused of an August 8, assault on a white Weaverville woman. On August 10, despite a lack of evidence and no investigation, a mob of white men seized Mr. Brackett at the home of a local reverend in nearby Barnardsville.
Mr. Brackett was detained in the Buncombe County Jail in Asheville. A white mob stormed the jail, only to discover that the sheriff had taken Mr. Brackett on a train to Raleigh. Determined to lynch Mr. Brackett, the mob abducted him from the sheriff at the Terrell train station and marched him 12 miles to the site of the reported attack. Before reaching Weaverville, the mob lynched Mr. Brackett on the grounds of the Hemphill School.
During this era, unfounded suspicion was regularly directed at African Americans, who were burdened with a presumption of guilt that made them vulnerable to lawless white mob violence, especially when a white woman reported an assault. Racial terror lynchings were bold acts to maintain white domination, and mob participants acted with impunity. No one was ever held accountable for the lynching of Bob Brackett.